Overpriced, useless, or just plain bizarre: an anti-garden gift guide

Gnome image courtesy of Shutterstock (Only kidding on this one. I heart gnomes.)

Inspired by the wonderful Haters Guide to The Williams Sonoma Catalog, which you have no doubt enjoyed via its countless Facebook postings, here is a similar look at the world of garden-related mail order. Sadly, a) I am not even one millionth as funny, and b) the gardening world lacks the rich diversity of overpriced and utterly superfluous crap that the food world has in such abundance.

We gardeners arepretty muchpractical folk and were not as likely to throw our money around as much as rich and bored foodies might. Fortunately for me, W-S has ventured into the gardening realm, and a lot of their gardening goods are just as WTF-ish as their food-related offerings. In fact, Deadspin has plenty to say about their chicken coops. (I dont really mind those. They help maintain living creatures, at least.) And there is other stuff that might not be expensive, but provides little benefit, unless you think we need more landfill fodder.

A hardworking table. It better be.
Remind me again why its necessary for me to use a table made with reclaimed 19^th-century European pine salvaged from buildings scheduled for demolition as a surface for putting plants and dirt into pots and taking plants and dirt out of pots.

But its bespoke!
This might look lovely as a stationary indoor fruit basket or some suchand at least its not $100 any morebut as for actually using the thing, all I can think about is the bumping against my hip and the scraping against my arm.

Heheh. They said agrarian.
This is priced at $12.95$269.95. The $12.95 part is the replacement liner. Now. I have nothing against raised beds. But this is not a truly useful raised bed. This is a dumb-looking wooden crate that will yield a few herbs and lettuces to be used in a salad thatI will inform my dinner party guestswas just picked from my garden.

Stupid bulb tricks.
Theres an argument to be made for expensive handmade garden tools. But this is not the item that would convince me. I plant hundreds of bulbs a year, and one thing Ive learned is that you really dont need a special tool for it. Stick a spade in the ground, drop the bulb in, cover it up. Boom. Better yet, stick a big shovel in the ground, throw a bunch of bulbs in, and cover them up. Double boom. This is $50 plus a backache.

Recipe for fail, part I
Oh, seeds. Oh, seeds, seeds, seeds. Ive learned my lesson with seed-starting and learned it the hard way. I am thinking that if, and only if, you filled up the cell part with better stuff and put it in a real greenhouse, you would likely get seedlings, but Im also thinking that people with real greenhouses wouldnt be buying this.

Recipe for fail, part II
And it looks so uninviting, like stuff you might wear to protect against against toxic waste. To get folks to spend $35, I would have gone another way with this photo shoot.

I have no idea what this is or what it does, but it has the word farm in it.
On the other hand, it is only 17 bucks. Maybe I should buy it, put it on, walk around with it for a few daysyeah, at work would be bestand see what happens. People keep talking to me, and its annoying.

Got some useless garden gifts youd like to complain about? Ormuch more likelydo you want to rebuke me for needlessly trashing things that other people might really like and that might encourage them to garden? Regardless, I hope you all get great gardening giftsincluding the best gift of all: a honking big gift cert to your favorite IGC!

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